Jumping Cholla Cactus

What’s taken in of us,by you, asked to be there stuck to your hands, legs, and face. We all wanted to stay still, like we’re meant to be,but all, all can be lost like our silvery-yellow spines, our common name in your tongue: cholla guera.

What drove you to wander heredrives us into you, that hunger, that love disguised as desperation—

¿by what logic do you pull yourself out, like you pull us out of your skin?

You come and go, come and go like the sun, the moon, ¿don’t you?

If there is danger,¿shouldn’t you cast a part of yourself out? End of daylight, start of exilelike bloodied rags disposed under siege.

¿Shouldn’t you be asking these questions before it’s too late?

You should know, you’re not the only one who hears the voices of your legs asking how they got this far.

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About the Author

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador and migrated to the US when he was nine. He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. The recipient of the 2016 Barnes and Noble Writer for Writer’s Award, his poems appear or are forthcoming in APR, Narrative, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.